Making Architecture Become: A performative approach to engaged encounters between inhabitants, architecture and technology

Cameline Bolbroe

    Research output: ThesesPhD thesis

    Abstract

    The advancement of digital technologies has led to significant changes in
    architectural design since the 1960s. Not only concerning the development
    of new digital design tools but also in relation to new features and
    properties of the built environment. Today, the opportunity to embed
    computational technologies directly into the fabric of buildings allow
    the design of architecture that changes, responds and adapts to changing
    patterns of inhabitation. Designing for such conditions challenges
    traditional architectural design approaches and emphasise the need for an
    approach, which positions the active and engaged inhabitant as central
    to architectural design processes. However, the majority of projects
    and research focusing on the integration of embedded computational technologies into architecture, primarily consider the human being, as an
    inhabitant, based on a static architectural paradigm. This thesis, positioned
    within the field of Adaptive Architecture, investigates how architectural
    design processes can be informed, taking into consideration the role and
    position of the inhabitant in Adaptive Architecture. To do so, the thesis
    explores how performative perspectives can contribute to the development
    of a methodological framework that allows the study of engaged encounters
    between inhabitants, architecture and technology.
    The thesis examines and discusses architectural discourse and projects
    concerning Adaptive Architecture from the 1960s and onwards, as well
    as recent contributions to the field. The review shows that a recurring
    ambition in the field concerns potentials that are resulting from direct
    mutual exchanges between the inhabitant, architecture and technology.
    Still, only few contributions are based on an experimental research design
    that in practice enable explorations into how the inhabitant co-constitutes
    Adaptive Architecture through their activities and actions. This discrepancy
    between ambition and practice, reveals a need to develop conceptualisations
    of the inhabitant as an acting and engaging individual, in order to realise
    adaptation to human needs, preferences and aspirations. Aiming to develop
    and offer a design perspective that encompasses such concerns, this thesis
    introduces an understanding of Adaptive Architecture as an architecture
    in-becoming. Through this lens, architecture may be considered as ongoing
    processes of action, exchange and engagement between the material,
    meaning, human and non-human. Accordingly, the character of the design
    process itself transitions from being compository to capacitive. In order to
    support such design processes, a post-dramatic performative approach is
    suggested as a means to understand and explore the particular conditions
    that unfold as relationships between inhabitants and forms of architecture
    with embedded computational technologies.
    Organised as a research-through-design process, the exploratory study
    in this thesis introduces and applies performance techniques to conduct
    participant-based explorations in three experimental environments. The
    results from this exploratory practice show that it is possible to unfold,
    describe and nuance a rich context of relational conditions that emerge as
    a result of engaged encounters between the participants and the particular
    experimental architectural environments. Based on the insights from
    the participant-based explorative experiments, a particular quality, the
    palimpsest (becoming-with-time), and four processes (becoming-withspace)
    are identified. The palimpsest denotes a particular relationship
    between time and action, and the four processes denote specific mutual
    exchanges between the participants and the experimental environments.
    These four processes: attunement, coupling, negotiation and collaboration
    are framed as capacitive processes. Based on the insights and results of
    the participant-based explorative experiments, a specific methodological
    framework is proposed in order to enable an opportunity to capacitate
    design processes, and in which the active and engaged inhabitant is taken
    into account. This methodological framework, Events as apparatuses for
    capacitation, contains three elements: observational positions, modes
    and structures of engagement. The application of this methodological
    framework in a professional context, substantiate a performance-based
    approach as a productive tool for the exploration of specific design
    objectives. Insights from practice frame two contributions to architectural
    design practice for capacitating informed design development of adaptive
    architectural environments. First, how a performative perspective on
    Adaptive Architecture can enable the exploration and information of
    adaptive architectural design in consideration of the active and engaged
    inhabitant. Next, how a performance-based methodology to adaptive
    architectural design enables the architectural researcher and practitioner to
    examine and develop processes and qualities of Adaptive Architecture.
    Original languageEnglish
    QualificationPhD
    Supervisor(s)
    • Petersen, Kjell Yngve, Principal Supervisor
    Award date21 Jun 2019
    Publisher
    Print ISBNs978-87-7949-028-4
    Publication statusPublished - 2019

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